Halloween, Birthday, and Preschool!

So much activity to catch up on over the past couple of weeks! No wonder I can't find time to blog...

First of all, Lia celebrated her second Halloween with us and this year dressed up as "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast. She decided on this costume a couple months ago and I was glad she didn't end up changing her mind at the last minute. She understood and was able to say "trick or treat" (or "rick or ree" as she says it). We were pleasantly surprised that the small town where we now live celebrates Halloween in a BIG way! They close off a six block radius of main street for three hours and all the businesses stay open late to give out candy to the kids. Some businesses even do group-themed costumes. It seems like the entire population turned out for this event. I'd never seen so many folks in town at once! My parents, sister, and uncle Dave all joined Steve, Lia and I for trick or treating. It was a fun night.

Next up? Lia's 3rd Birthday, which we celebrated last Saturday. She again wanted to wear her Belle costume, but this time the theme was (again, her decision) "Purple, Princess, Pony" (her three favorite things currently). The party was a great success with lots of extended family and friends present for her big day.

The biggest moment (for me) was watching her blow out her own birthday candles. Redirecting air flow to her mouth (from her nose) has been a big goal in speech therapy the past several months, so it was awesome to see her blow air with enough force to extinguish those three candles.

After the big party, we were lucky enough to have won tickets (for the second year in a row!) to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live, so we headed downtown and took in the big show. Needless to say, we had a very tired little girl by the end of the night... 

Last (but definitely not least), Lia started preschool on Monday! This was a big deal because she had to be three in order to qualify for the school's early preschool program, which is communication-intensive and integrates kids with speech and hearing deficits into the same classroom with "typically developing" three year olds. During her time there (3 days/week, 2.5 hrs/day), she will also receive two half-hour sessions of one-on-one speech therapy with the therapist she has been seeing the past four weeks (who we love!) All in all, a terrific situation for us. We are so happy to have found this program in our local community! 

Definitely a busy and exciting few weeks around here, with only more to come as she gets used to school, and the big holiday season just around the corner. She's already excited everytime she sees Santa and his "ponies" (reindeer). "Rudolph, the red-nosed PONY..."